


fireproof (think I'm gonna lose my mind)

by LettieB



Category: Naruto
Genre: Dorks in Love, F/M, First Kiss, after shikamaru hiden, before naruhina wedding, he's in love and he's a mess, shikamaru is a mess, temari is a cool confident queen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:33:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23372488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LettieB/pseuds/LettieB
Summary: The conversation had somehow taken a turn to his prowess in wooing a girl – which was next to none – and in kissing – which was exactly none. That’s when it happens.She notices his hesitation and the teasing tone drops dead.“You… have kissed someone before, right?”
Relationships: Nara Shikamaru/Temari
Comments: 5
Kudos: 113





	fireproof (think I'm gonna lose my mind)

**Author's Note:**

> What’s up, fandom? The ShikaTema section has been kinda dead lately, so here’s something to help. I’ve got a lot of oneshots half written and abandoned and this was one of them. This is first kiss fluff with a side of lowkey ‘fuck you’ to assuming the girl’s inexperienced and the boy has whored around, and an extra dash of Shikamaru is so in love he’s an absolute mess.  
> Title is a one direction song lol because I heard it a lot when I started writing this like, four years ago

It starts as a joke.

They had gone on a few dates by then, but due to their own cautious, reserved nature, it had stayed on dinner, a nice conversation and a wave goodbye by her front door. They were stuck in that awkward in-between phase where they felt attached enough that dating someone else would feel like cheating, but it was so soon that calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend would be laughable. So they teased each other and danced around the matter and hoped the other would make the first move.

Until some warm day mid-spring when they’d left the Hokage Tower and bumped right into that mousy Shiho girl who was infatuated with Shikamaru, and Temari, naturally, thought it fit to tease him to death about it once the girl had left. The conversation had somehow taken a turn to his prowess in wooing a girl – which was next to none – and in kissing – which was _exactly_ none. That’s when it happens.

She notices his hesitation and the teasing tone drops dead.

“You… have kissed someone before, right?”

He goes red. In truth he hadn’t ever paid much attention to girls in his life. As a boy, he’d treated the matter with scorn. He’d known he’d have to marry somebody some day in the far off future, but it was a chore to even think about it. As a teenager, he’d been surrounded by obnoxious girls who were always madly infatuated with other guys. And then there was the war. Did he mention he fought a _war_? He was a bit too worried about surviving to worry about not having kissed anyone yet.

So he’d just pushed the matter more and more to that far off future, expecting fate to do its job and throw someone his way in the right time.

His theory hadn’t been entirely at fault, because fate _had_ thrown someone his way in the right time. It’d thrown _Temari_. But now he’s standing in front of this hurricane of a woman who is brilliant and gorgeous and three years older and he wouldn’t know where to put his hands if she kissed him.

His silence is answer enough. Her eyes fill with a predatory sort of mirth and she steps right into his personal space.

“Are you telling me… That you never, ever kissed a girl?”

He’s suddenly overcome with anxiety. He can take the teasing, but that malicious gleam in her eye is worrying. And she is way closer than what is considered polite, closer than she’s possibly ever been before.

He’s so nervous that he can’t help but blurt out, “What’s it to you?” full of defensiveness, hoping she starts laughing so hard she has to step away.

But stepping away seems to be the last thing on Temari’s list, because she outright _giggles_. Temari. Giggling. He didn’t know she could make that sound. And what is she _doing_? She suddenly takes that one last step towards him, and to his sheer desperation, wraps her arms around his neck. His hands damn near fly to his pockets, he’s too scared they’d land somewhere inappropriate otherwise.

“What are you doing?” he squeaks.

She doesn’t so much answer as demonstrates. “Put your hands on my waist.”

He doesn’t know exactly what game she’s playing, but he doesn’t want to make her angry, so he scrambles to keep up, cursing his suddenly sweaty hands.

She continues. “Listen up. When you kiss someone for the first time, don’t shove your tongue down their throat, that’s so rude. Start slow. Press your lips to theirs, take your time. Also, close your eyes, you’ll look like a freak just staring at someone when they kiss you. And tilt your head. Noses are a thing and knocking them together is really unpleasant.”

He feels something like coldness spread in his belly, a mix of excitement and anxiety. Is she… Seriously coaching him on how to kiss someone? Is she messing him around? She isn’t seriously going to kiss him like this, is she? She wouldn’t. That’s Temari in front of him, she wouldn’t… Would she? The small voice on the back of his mind that tells him things he doesn’t want to think about – and strangely always sounds a bit like Ino – whispers that they _have_ been on _three_ dates now.

It hits him like a hammer.

Seriously? Three? It’d been that many?

Perhaps this was less about teaching him, and more about taking the next step.

 _No wonder she’s making the move herself –_ the voice adds – _you’re such a moron._

He must have been a bit dazed in his little nervous meltdown because Temari places a hand on his cheek to call his attention.

“Still with me?” she asks, mostly amused but with a small wrinkle between her eyes that lets him know she’s perhaps a bit doubtful of this herself.

He’d thought she was teasing all this time, still expected her to step back at the last minute and go ‘ _you should have seen your face’_ , but this little moment is different. This isn’t teasing. There’s a question in her eyes, and he realizes this is her asking for permission. And he’s so nervous, he hasn’t been this nervous around Temari since he was fifteen and awkward and she showed up in the village in a black kimono and he’d thought ‘ _oh no, she’s hot’_.

 _Three dates!_ That voice screams in the back of his mind, and he remembers the smile she gave him outside the restaurant when she first accepted his invitation, remembers her – all fury and power – coming to his rescue all those months ago, in that disaster of a mission in the country of silence, remembers thinking she was the sun that cleared the darkness in his heart.

“Yes,” he answers, and it comes out a bit hoarser than he’d expected.

“Alright,” she says, and he’s not quite sure what to think anymore but her voice has lowered too and the hand on his cheek slips down to rest on his chest and he can feel the warmth of it burning through his shirt.

He’s in a state of hyper awareness but it’s entirely concentrated on Temari. Naruto could be standing right beside him shouting directly into his ear about ramen and he wouldn’t perceive it but he can hear the little hitch in Temari’s breath and count every single browned freckle on her nose – he hadn’t known she had any in the first place – and for the first time in his life he notices that her irises are actually split down the very middle in half blue and half green and that’s why they change with the light and _what in the world is going on he can’t breathe-_

“Ok. Ok then. One last thing,” Temari says, and she has _never_ stood this close to him in their lives, he actually has to tilt his chin down so he can look at her and it’s more instinct than her previous instruction but his head kind of just turns a bit sideways to watch her lips move. What _is_ she saying? “It doesn’t hurt to ask but you can pretty much tell if a girl wants you to kiss her by the way she looks at you.”

His heart is beating so fast he can feel it in his throat, and there’s that rush of adrenaline again, running through his blood stream like coldness and every hair on the back of his neck is on end. She’s looking at him with those blue-green eyes filled with something he cannot name, something he’s seen from across a shared desk in Union meetings and something he’s felt keenly late at night, angry and frustrated and too tired to tamp it down. He’s not sure he’s still breathing, but he’s hundred percent sure coherent thought has left the building, because when her eyes dart down and focus on his lips, his body moves without prompting.

He leans in and his eyes close midway, his hand on her waist slides along her back and pulls her closer and he’s kissing her.

He’s actually kissing her.

All the tension that had been mounting on his shoulders just goes out in a rush and he lets go.

It’s hesitant and gentle at first, and then she puts a bit more pressure, pushes against him and deepens it. One of his hands leaves her waist to sprawl on the back of her head where his fingers tangle in her hair and she curls a hand on the back of his neck and tugs him down, like he could possibly be any closer than he already was. A thought flashes through his mind about how he’d looked at couples making out as a teenager and thought that it was gross and— he gets it now. He _fucking gets it._ He’s a sweaty, confused, wrecked pile of nerves, but he’s pretty sure he likes kissing Temari. No, scratch that. He’s made up his mind. He does. He fucking loves kissing Temari.

She pulls away and he kind of stumbles after her, because he doesn’t want to part. He feels rather than sees her smile, and they rest their foreheads together. It wasn’t a particularly steamy kiss but the intensity of it has knocked him breathless and he needs a second to recover, because wow.

Fucking _wow._ He’s just kissed Temari.

Or, really. All things considered. Temari kissed him.

 _Temari_ kissed _him_.

His thought process doesn’t really want to move along from that. And she seems to know it too, because she breathes out a little laugh, and it’s the gentlest sound in the universe. She’s not mocking him, but she is amused. Great genius that he is, suddenly reduced to a puddle because his girlfriend kissed him.

 _Fuck._ They are totally boyfriend and girlfriend now, right? This was totally boyfriend and girlfriend territory, right?

“You’re thinking really hard for someone who looks like they got hit by lightning,” she teases.

And because his brain has been turned to mush, he just blurts out, “Oi, Temari, we’re dating now, right?”

She rolls her eyes. “Have been for a couple weeks, but thanks for noticing.”

He’s not sure if his face has ever gone back to normal after kissing her – _kissing her –_ but he’s sure it’s maintained its redness for a little longer after her comment. “You know what I mean,” he whines.

She smiles at him, one of her softest, “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

She takes his hand when she steps back. His instinct is to try and pull it away because did he mention he was a sweaty pile of nerves? His hands are clammy and gross. But she holds on tighter. Sends him a confused glance, then seems to understand his predicament.

She grins at him, the bright, teasing grin that has been making his knees a bit wobbly since he was fifteen. “Oi, your girlfriend wants to hold your hand. Are you really not going to let me?”

And it seems impossible after all the pirouettes his stomach has done during the last few minutes, but his insides absolutely turn to mush at her words. It’s a good thing his teammates are not around because Ino wouldn’t even need to poke into his head to see what he was thinking. His sudden idiocy is written all over his face. They’d never let him live it down.

“Ok,” he says, and it comes out way too squeaky, so he clears his throat, tries to sound less like a dork, “Ok,” he repeats, “Your boyfriend wants to hold your hand too,” he manages.

And it might just be a trick of the sun, but he thinks _Temari is blushing too._

At some point during the day, the stray, unwanted thought wanders uninvited into his head, a derisive little blurb along the lines of _shouldn’t you be ashamed your girlfriend taught you how to kiss?_ But it lasts all of the five minutes it takes for Temari to kiss him again.

So yeah, he’s not ashamed. Between the two of them _someone_ should know what they’re doing, and he’s pretty glad she does.

[Later, when he walks her home, she kisses him against the door in an entirely different way because it’s late, and dark, and no one is watching. And he’s not thinking, not thinking _at all_ , but if he were it would be an endless stream of curse words and solid pterodactyl screeching because he is pretty sure he is making out with Temari and it’s the BEST. DAY. EVER.]

Yeah, he’s pretty glad after all.


End file.
